REVIEW:
Someone Dies! blends dark comedy with the crime and sci-fi genre. It’s a cheap one set flick that takes place inside an apartment. Detective Jim Jenkins (Joseph Graham) has a problem: he has received a note informing him that his daughter has been kidnapped. In order to get her back, he must go to an unknown apartment and plant a listening device under the kitchen sink. So he goes there, where he ends up meeting Glenn (John Wessling), the occupier and Jane (the co-script writer Amy Anderson), who is there for her own affairs. What follows is a great deal of misunderstandings, a lot of drama, a terrible event and time traveling.
Someone Dies! reminds me of a more idiotic version of MyName is Earl television series of about ten years back. Change the idiot hick thief who won the lottery and is trying to make amends for all the bad things he has done into a dumb Houston private detective with ex-wife troubles trying to save his daughter, add two meddling but well intentioned suspects, and there is a potentially funny movie with a sci-fi absurdist bent in the making.
What keeps Someone Dies! from being a true hit is its inability to open up beyond its one set location. There’s a lot of supposition that could have been shown but aren’t . It’s a sketch movie that is mostly improvised. Everything flies by in the swift chatter. Nothing gets to settle down and truly hit. It’s needed more visual gags, less talk.
Still the cast is fun to watch, the cinematography has an appropriate grindhouse feel, most of the bits hit,
and the editing is resourceful and creative.
Someone Dies! gets a 3,0/5 or a B. It’s being shown as a part of the Chattanooga Film Festival that runs virtually from June 21-28.
CREDITS:
Directed by
Writing Credits
Justin Petty. &
Cast
Joseph Graham
Amy Anderson
John Wessling
Adam Edwards
Cinematography by
Editing by
Runtime
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